Blood Vow

by J. R. Ward

  And there was the issue.

  When your daughter was on the other side of a thin door, dressed in a frail little hospital gown, her eyes big and wide from current fear and past trauma as her personal space and her body were invaded by third parties, the last thing you wanted was a bunch of people falling all over you because they thought you were Channing Tatum and Chris Hemsworth's frickin' love child.

  Maybe he should put a paper bag over his head--

  As a hand came down on his shoulder, he jumped--and was equally shocked to find Zsadist sitting down next to him on the hard floor of the corridor.

  Across the way, V and Lassiter were still on their feet and arguing, the pair of them face to hockey mask, the brother putting a hand-rolled between his lips--and then whipping it out as if he remembered he couldn't light up--the angel more than holding his own, talking a mile a minute.

  Rhage didn't have the energy or the focus to spare on them.

  All he could think about was...

  "She's just suffered enough," he heard himself say. "God...how long have they been in there?"

  Looking into the eyes of his brother, he saw that instead of that stare being yellow, Z's peepers were jet black.

  But yeah, Rhage was being pretty annoying. He'd been bitching about the same thing for how long now? No wonder his brother was getting frustrated with him.

  "Sorry." Rhage rubbed his face. "I've got to shut up over here. Don't mean to piss you off."

  Z looked at him like he'd sprouted a horn in the middle of his forehead. "Not you. I just want to dig up that sire of hers and kill him all over again. If Nalla had been abused like that? And had bones full of past breaks?"

  The brother stopped talking at that point. Just as well. Rhage felt like vomiting again.

  "When it's your kids, it's just a whole different level." Rhage started to bang his head against the wall, and then worried that it might disturb Bitty and the doctors. "You know, I wasn't prepared for this. I mean, I thought the hard part about being a dad was going to be the arguments--like her bringing some knuckle-dragging mouth breather home and expecting me not to slice off his smooth criminals and plant them in the yard. But this? I want to be the one going through it for her. It's just not fair."

  Z held his stare, solid as a rock, about as far from psychotic as the brother had once been knee-deep in the crazy. "You are a tremendous father, you know that. You're the real deal."

  Rhage looked away fast. Cleared his throat. "I feel like I'm failing her."

  "You're right with her when she needs you most."

  "No, to do that, I'd have to be on that exam table. I'd have to have my body there instead of hers."

  "Not possible and you know it." Z cursed softly. "The hardest thing about being a father is not being able to make everything all right for them. Sometimes the best you can do is just show up."

  "There has to be more to it."

  "If there is and you figure it out, let me know."

  "Ha! You're the best father I've ever seen."

  "Tell you what, I'll call your ass the next time I lie awake wondering how I could have screwed things up worse."

  "But it's different for you."

  "Why." When Rhage didn't fill in the blank, Z didn't let the unspoken remain silent. "Why, because Nalla is biologically mine? G'head, say it. 'Cuz when you hear that shit come out of your mouth, you'll realize how stupid it is."

  "I just...I wonder if I'd be doing something better if...you know, I were really her sire."

  "Oh, like her biological father, you mean? Like the motherfucker who put her on that table? You want to be like him? Yeah, that's a real improvement over a guy who's been here in this corridor, looking like he's going through open-heart surgery without anesthesia 'cuz his little girl's having a hard time."

  Rhage rubbed his hair so hard his fingers were fuzzy when he stopped. "You wouldn't understand. You're never going to be in my shoes."

  "That's my point, though. Whether you had a hand in birthing them or you volunteer to take them in, we're all in the same shoes."

  Rhage stared at the closed door in front of him. "I'm scared, Z. I'm just...fucking scared. What if there's something permanently wrong? That's what Doc Jane is worried about, you know. She's worried Bitty's transition will ruin her arms and legs so badly...that they're going to end up having to amputate them."

  The image of Bitty dancing through the foyer made his eyes sting. She was so active now...he couldn't imagine her in a wheelchair that was operated by her blowing into a tube. It just killed him.

  "What the...what the fuck are you talking about?" Z demanded.

  "Something to do with growth plates. There were breaks that occurred right along"--He motioned to his thighs, his forearms, his calves--"you know, Bitty's growth plates, and they healed wrong? So when the change hits her, they're liable to bust open and be unrepairable."

  "Shit."

  "Mary doesn't know." Rhage went back to trying to pull his hair out. "Yeah, I should have told her before now, but I just didn't know how. I told Doc Jane I would. But I'm a fucking coward for both of them. I was hoping...for good news, I guess, but the longer they're in there, the more I think--"

  Across the way, the exam room door swung open, and Doc Jane emerged.

  One look at her face and he knew that the worst case had rolled out in there.

  "How bad is it?" Rhage gritted as he jumped to his shitkickers. "And is there anything we can do?"

  urtleneck.

  Hours later, as Axe sat silently in the back of the "school bus," he tried to think of where in the hell he could get a turtleneck.

  Reaching up to his throat, he massaged the side that he'd had tattooed and wondered if he could find one in his father's shit. And didn't that make him want a stiff drink...or maybe even a syringe full of lights-out.

  He hadn't been anywhere near his dad's room since the death.

  "Fuck," he said to the blackened window.

  To get out of his head, he looked away from his reflection--and hey, what do you know. Pey-pey had gotten bored of the don't-touch-my-cousin routine, and was back in his primary mode of staring at Paradise as she sat beside her male.

  No one had had a good time tonight, not that training was ever a party. But yeah, it stung when you were forced to meet your failures head on. What was fun? Seeing Peyton all castrated across the aisle from that female, wishing he could get in her head and help her out, be the savior he felt she needed. You could practically read the thought bubbles floating around.

  Sorry, champ. She had all she required.

  Novo stood up and walked down to Axe, shoving him over so she could take a load off. "I'm going at two a.m. When is your interview?"

  "In a half hour." He rubbed his tattoos, thinking they were probably going to work against him. "I gotta hustle."

  "Good luck."

  As the female put her palm out, Axe shook it. "You, too."

  "Guess it's just you and me going for the job." Her voice took on an edge. "Peyton already has enough money, and far be it from him to let gainful employment get in the way of his smoking up. Boone doesn't need the cash, either--and Paradise and Craeg are already providing extra security at the Audience House on their nights off."

  Shit, Axe wasn't crazy about competing with Novo--he would have much rather gone up against another male, and yeah, guess that made him sexist. Then again, the joke was probably on him. She was just as good at the fighting and the shooting as he was, her strength nearly that of his own, her brains a little ahead of his. She also didn't look like a serial killer.

  But hey, he would take his piercings out. Bam. Nearly normal.

  He also had zero personal skills. So she could very well beat him in the interview.

  "You want to have a friendly wager?" Novo drawled.

  "On what?"

  "Who gets it? Loser has to pay for dinner."

  He wasn't in a position to buy her a Kit Kat. "How about winner buys dinner?"

  "Deal.
"

  Twenty minutes later, the bus came to a stop and everyone filed off. The night was bitterly cold, and no one lingered to talk. As Axe dematerialized to his father's cottage, he thought it was weird that he'd never called the little place his "parents' "--but then again, there had been no "parents" involved with the damn thing. It had been built for his mother, and hadn't done its job to keep her in the family.

  So the roof and four walls were nothing but a monument to his father's weakness for a female.

  Going inside, he was glad there was no electricity, no lights to turn on. He couldn't stand the kitchen, hated looking at it, and he steamed right through the shallow space. The stairs to the second floor were short and steep and he took them two at a time, proceeding to the only open door.

  He kept his father's room closed off.

  His room was a mattress on the floor, clothes in piles, and not much else. Hell, he didn't even sleep up here, because the fireplace was downstairs and he had to stay warm. In the spring and summer, though, he'd move back to the second floor--or maybe he wouldn't. Who cared.

  Axe went through his own "wardrobe" of muscle shirts, black jeans, and the occasional leather jacket or cloak, although not because he expected a turtleneck to have miraculously appeared courtesy of the Look-More-Normal Fairy Godmother dropping by. It was more because he had to brace himself to go through his father's stuff.

  Ten minutes and no turtle-for-his-neck later, he was down the hall and opening the door. With no lights on anywhere in the house, the shallow space was nothing but shadows and shades of gray...kind of like his self-hatred had sucked the color out of everything.

  He couldn't even look at the bed, which was still messy from the last time his father had slept it in two years ago, and he certainly didn't spare all the pictures of his fucking mother a glance, and no, he didn't dwell on the layer of dust that covered everything or the fact that one of the windows had sprung from its sash and let in fallen leaves and even some of the snow.

  It seemed colder in the room, his breath condensing in puffs of white.

  Maybe his father was haunting the place.

  As a shiver went down his spine, Axe marched his ass over to the bureau and went through the things in it with rough, agitated hands. He found what he was looking for in the bottom drawer.

  It seemed so fucking weird to think the thing had been worn and used by the male. And as he shoved the drawer shut, and beat feet out of the room like he was being stalked, he vowed never to go in there again.

  Back in his own space, he stripped off his muscle shirt and pulled on his father's turtleneck. Heading over to the mirror above his cheap dresser, he leaned in and made sure everything on his throat was covered up.

  Just before he turned away, he reached up and removed, one by one, the black piercings that ran from his lobe up to his cartilage on the same side as his tattoos. Also took out the one on his brow.

  Next move was to arm himself. Slipping on a shoulder holster, he tucked the pair of forties he'd been given the week before into both sides. The way the Brothers saw it, they were investing time and money into the trainees and the last thing they needed was for anyone in the program to wake up dead because they had shit equipment: Once the class had all been vetted properly at the gun range, the Glocks had been handed out--and although you were not permitted to bring the weapons into the training center, you sure as shit were expected to have 'em with you outside of it.

  And use them properly if necessary. Unlike what they'd done the night before.

  Out of the house, didn't bother to lock the door--after all, there was no electricity to power the alarm, and besides, he didn't really care about anything under the roof.

  Hell, it'd be a relief if somebody broke in and lit the place on fire. Not that that was likely. He lived in the sticks; his nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away and probably took a donkey in to work.

  Axe knew before he even dematerialized to the interview location that the house--or mansion or castle or whatever--was going to be huge. Even poor kids raised outside of the human world knew where the big estates were, and the zip code the place was in?

  Yeah...okay, he thought as he re-formed.

  Wow.

  Axe shook his head at the stone structure in front of him. The thing had to be at least three stories high, and the front face of the slate roof alone seemed big as a football field. With about seven hundred black shutters and a front door that was more like the entrance to a parliament or a maybe a municipal library, he couldn't actually believe a family lived there.

  Then again, it wasn't just a momma bear, a papa bear, and a baby bear. There were probably dozens of doggen.

  It was exactly the kind of place his father would have been called on to work in.

  Precisely like the sort of fancy home where the male had been killed during the raids.

  Before he blew the job interview before it even started, Axe swallowed his bitterness and hiked it up the snow-covered lawn until he stepped over a low hedge that skirted a circular ring-around and proceeded to a series of steps to the front door.

  There was a huge brass door knocker that was big as his arm, and also a discreet intercom off to one side.

  He was reaching for the button when the heavy weight was opened by--oh, snap--a uniformed butler who looked alarmingly like Sir John Gielgud.

  In his Arthur years.

  "Are you Axwelle, son of Theirsh?" the male said with perfect diction.

  For some completely unhelpful reason, Axe's brain coughed out Dudley Moore doing his best drunk impression: You're a hooker? Jesus...I forgot! I just thought I was doing great with you!

  "Sire?" the butler prompted. "Are you Axwelle?"

  Shaking himself, he almost answered with a Yeah. "Yes, I am."

  "Please, do come in." The butler backed up and indicated with his hand. "I shall let my master know that you have arrived in a timely fashion."

  "Thanks. Thank you."

  Something about the guy made him want to be less of a schmo. Fuck that, everything about this whole damn thing made him--

  Axe stopped where he was. Flaring his nostrils, he breathed in as the butler in the penguin suit said a few things and then turned away to walk over to a closed door.

  Wait a minute, Axe thought.

  Pivoting slowly in a circle, he continued to test the scents in the air. The big open reception hall, foyer, whatever the hell it was called, could easily fit three of the houses he lived in and still have room for a bowling alley, a swimming pool, and maybe an ice-skating rink. And the stuff that was placed around the open, cathedral-like space looked really old and really expensive: The floor was white and gray marble and there was, like, crystal shit hanging everywhere and oil paintings mounted on the walls. Oh, and there was a fireplace, but not like the one that kept him warm during the day. Theirs had, like, black marble and gold carvings around it, and the hearth was so big they didn't have logs so much as tree trunks in there.

  But he couldn't have cared less about all that.

  What he had caught on the air, after filtering out the woodsy pitch of the crackling fire and the soap of the doggen and a distant aftermath of some kind of meat having been served somewhere on the first floor...was the scent of that female from last night.

  Peyton's cousin either had visited here very recently...or she lived under this roof.

  "My master will see you now," the butler said from behind him.

  Yes, Axe thought as he wheeled around. You're damn right he will.

  --

  Sometimes nightmares happened in front of you and hurt people you loved, and even though you prayed to wake up...you knew that there was no alarm clock about to ring, no eyelids to lift, no rollover and reposition about to save you.

  Mary was in one of those loops of suffering now.

  Bitty was lying on an exam table, a white sheet and blanket folded off to the side, her thin, pale limbs reflecting the light from the massive fixture above her. She was so pale
, her face was the color of a Kleenex, and she was trembling, a twitchy, wrung-out shell of the vibrant, happy little girl she usually was.

  As Mary stood next to her, the details of the clinical environment, the beeping equipment and the white tile, the stainless-steel everything, the people in blue scrubs and masks, were at once crystal clear and utterly diffused--and as in a dreamscape, the two extremes on the awareness scale alternated, the scene going in and out of focus randomly.

  She'd known it was going to be hard to get through the night. But she'd assumed that would be because of Bitty's memories of abuse getting triggered. Or the fact that the girl was having to go back to the very clinic at which she had watched her mother die. Or even due to the claustrophobia of the MRI, the discomfort of the examination, the tedium of waiting for the test results to come in.

  Not. Even. Fucking. Close.

  Each one of Bitty's major bones was being broken and reset. Even on the leg that had a shin made from a titanium rod. Without anesthesia because she was allergic to it.

  It was indescribable, the horror, the pain, the terror. And it was hard not to rail against God in this moment, cursing whoever was up there for this perfect storm of bad news: growth plates compromised by badly healed breaks; possible amputations after the transition; her being a non-viable candidate for general anesthesia due to her previous reaction to it.

  What little pain relief that could be given didn't go nearly far enough.

  "One more," she heard herself say. "You can do this."

  Bitty didn't seem to comprehend the words. She was lost to the haze of agony, and Mary just wanted to break down in tears herself.

  But she couldn't afford the trip to insanity.

  Mary leaned down even closer. "Last one, okay? This is our last one."

  Bitty's eyes opened wide, tears making them luminous, the great purple smudges that had appeared underneath making her seem like she was on the verge of death. "I can't do it. Please...make them stop...."

  "One more. I promise you, just one more." She brushed back the bangs and kissed Bitty's forehead. "Hold my hand. Come on. Squeeze as hard as you have to."

  "I can't do it...please, Mommy...help me...."

  Sobs racked the little girl's body, making the hospital gown seem as if it were caught in a breeze, and Mary began to cry, too, the tears rolling down her cheeks and dropping onto the thin mattress of the table.